Interview with a Tesla Enthusiast

This interview below took place on the 16th of November, 2020, over a video call. The interviewee is a longtime enthusiast of Electric Vehicles (EVs) familiar with Silicon Valley and the debates surrounding Tesla. The passages below offer valuable, and sometimes personal perspective from the pro-Tesla angle. The interviewee prefers to stay anonymous.

Photo from Getty Image

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He traces his fascination with Tesla to reading about the company in the Popular Science magazine in 7th grade. “Like any good boy would,” says the interviewee. Citing the early stages of Tesla’s development in numbers (for example, Tesla’ had a 150-300 mile range compared to the 25-mile range of other EVs in the market), he thought “this was simply magic.” And, “naturally, you have to ask what is going on, looking at this order of magnitude.”

Tesla’s co-founder Elon Musk opened the door for him to what he called “The Musk Universe,” referencing the Marvel cinematic universe’s extensive reach. He followed closely the development of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and even the failure of the Solar City. For many years, he has been maintaining a folder on his laptop, numerically cataloging video clips, photos, and documents of Tesla, SpaceX, paraphernalia of electric vehicles totaling a few thousand.

When asked about his association with the expanding collection of knowledge surrounding Tesla, he explained it as wanting to claim proud ownership of a good “I-told-you-so.” “You see the market size of the company grew by like 100 fold,” says he. In addition to the growth of Tesla’s stock market price, he is also fascinated by the exponential growth in their products’ size and speed since the company’s early years. “For these things in silicon valley, you want to be the early joiner, the day-0 joiner. You want to be in the first chapter.” “You want to be there at the beginning, not being the 100,000th employee,”he added.

“These things get me in the door,” he added. Our interviewee has been working for another EV start-up. “It’s what Tesla can do to energy as a whole. And you know this is in good hands, it’s gonna be big.” he says, “Tesla is a forcing function for other auto-manufacturers, a linchpin that sets off the explosion.”

He talked about the phenomenon of Elon Musk and his companies becoming one and the same. When responding to the question of whether it is reductionist to equate Elon Musk with his companies, and therefore dismiss the engineers, designers, and factory workers, he says, “if you ask any one of these employees, does Musk get too much credit for his company, they will say Musk doesn’t get enough credit.” “The working condition is one thing” (referring to Tesla’s notoriously unpleasant working environment) “Musk getting more credit is another thing,” he added. “The only reason that’s keeping this whole thing going is Musk’s strategic plan.”

“So Musk is even oddly socialist in terms of worker’s share. The employees can build a successful career even by staying with the company for one year, two years. They get a cut of the shares, and it’s good for their careers.”

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